is. Then what distress
Were hers and his--her lover's; and success
How doubly difficult if Arthur slain,
King Urience lived to assert his right to reign.
So paused she pondering on the blade; her lips
Breathless and close as close cold finger tips
Hugged the huge weapon's hilt. And so she sighed,
"Nay! long, too long hast lived who shouldst have died
Even in the womb abortive! who these years
Hast leashed sweet life to care with stinging tears,
A knot thus harshly severed!--As thou art
Into the elements naked!"
O'er his heart
The long sword hesitated, lean as crime,
Descended redly once. And like a rhyme
Of nice words fairly fitted forming on,--
A sudden ceasing and the harmony gone,
So ran to death the life of Urience,
A strong song incomplete of broken sense.
There glowered the crimeful Queen. The glistening sword
Unfleshed, flung by her wronged and murdered lord;
And the dark blood spread broader thro' the sheet
To drip a horror at impassive feet
And blur the polished oak. But lofty she
Stood proud, relentless; in her ecstacy
A lovely devil; a crowned lust that cried
On Accolon; that harlot which defied
Heaven with a voice of pulses clamorous as
Steep storm that down a cavernous mountain pass
Blasphemes an hundred echoes; with like power
The inner harlot called its paramour:
Him whom King Arthur had commanded, when
Borne from the lists, be granted her again
As his blithe gift and welcome from that joust,
For treacherous love and her adulterous lust.
And while she stood revolving how her deed's
Concealment were secured,--a grind of steeds,
Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed
Fierce in the northern court. To her athirst
For him her lover, war and power it spoke,
Him victor and so King; and then awoke
A yearning to behold, to quit the dead.
So a wild specter down wide stairs she fled,
Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail,
That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail.
To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce,
Down from a steaming steed into her ears,
"This from the King, a boon!" laughed harsh and hoarse;
Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer with force,
Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn and red,
Crusted with blood a knight in armor--dead;
Even Accolon, tossed with the mocking scoff
"This from the King!"--phantoms in fog rode off.
And what remains? From Camelo